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Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, a lot of Americans are watching this spectacle: a $400 million gift from Qatar, which President Trump has called a ``palace in the sky.''
It would be for his personal use now and then afterward when he is a private citizen. And they are wondering, Isn't there a law that prevents it? Isn't there some statute that stops this corruption--a gift to the President from a foreign power that makes him beholden for his personal benefit and use?
And the answer to the American people is, yes, there is a law. In fact, it is in the Constitution. It is a specific clause. It is called the foreign emoluments clause. It states:
[N]o person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
And the reason for this clause, which was written by the Founders centuries ago, is so powerfully shown today. At the beginning of our Nation, we were a small country, potentially influenced by big foreign powers--England, France.
The Founders were concerned that our Presidents or other officials could be bought, could be influenced, could be pressured by those foreign powers. So they specifically wrote into the statutes a measure that protected our small Nation then.
It applies equally now. In fact, now, it is even more a protection of our national security. This plane is emblematic of a core, metastasizing corruption, an economic cancer that has infected the White House, but it is also emblematic of a national security threat from nations who would buy our President--maybe not signed, sealed, and delivered but exert undue influence.
In fact, the national security threat is even greater from this plane, which would have to be taken apart--a huge expense to American taxpayers--literally taken apart down to its shell.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I can tell you that there are foreign powers all over the world who would like nothing better than a Qatar plane to be carrying the President of the United States--potentially bugged, infiltrated by systems that could be hacked by them, not just by Qatar or other Mideast nations.
It is a threat to our national security to have the President of the United States riding in this plane unless it is, in effect, taken apart and put back together with the systems and the safeguards that are included on Air Force One.
This blatantly corrupt act shows that the President is just in it for himself. In fact, that kind of equipping of the plane will take billions of dollars of taxpayer money and years of work to bring this aircraft up to the requirements--the minimal requirements--of Air Force One, ready in time for the President to use it after he leaves office. And President Trump won't even pay the transfer fees.
The reports that the U.S. Air Force will pay all of the costs related to retrofitting and transferring this plane to the United States, even to the Presidential library, show the blatant corruption here. Accepting the plane is bad enough, but foisting on taxpayers the expense of retrofitting it and updating it and then transferring it to his foundation is an insult to every American.
And my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would like to say it is only Democrats who are objecting, but, in fact, MAGA media personalities strongly agree. One described the planned gift of this plane as a ``bribe''--pretty right on. Another called it ``indefensible''--also right.
Even Laura Loomer opposes this gift. She described this incident as a ``stain'' on the Trump administration. I never thought I would say that she is right, too, but it is a stain not on the Trump administration alone. It is a stain on America. It is a stain on our national honor. It is a stain on the integrity of the greatest country in the history of the world.
Foreign governments have figured out how to get to Donald Trump. It is through his wallet, his vanity, and his bank account.
It is not just this ``palace in the sky.'' The Qatari Government has signed a $5.5 billion deal with the Trump Organization to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar, complete with Trump-branded beach side villas and an 18-hole golf course.
And it is not just Qatar. President Trump has also pursued new business deals with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and others, including Serbia.
On May 1, Trump's cryptocurrency firm announced that an investment fund backed by the United Arab Emirates would be using President Trump's digital coins to complete a $2 billion transaction. Through this deal, President Trump and his family stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars from a foreign state, and their ``cryptocurrency empire,'' if I can use that term loosely, which includes World Liberty Financial, as well as their meme coin, $TRUMP, is making hundreds of millions of dollars--literally, hundreds of millions of dollars, for example, through the transfer fee involved in FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. That is the reason that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Minority Staff, which I head, has written asking for more facts from FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT and World Liberty Financial.
But this crypto corruption is, again, just one more of the ongoing corrupt con games that President Trump has helmed. LIV Golf, backed by the Saudi Government, will host a tournament at Trump National Doral resort later this year, and the Trump Organization has announced new real estate developments on government-owned land in Serbia and elsewhere.
Now, there is a kind of fundamental principle here, and it goes back to the Founders. The American President is supposed to work for the American people, not for his own enrichment. In foreign policy and on the international stage, he is supposed to represent the United States of America, not his own business interests, or any foreign state or any business privately.
And that is what the emoluments clause is meant to guarantee. It protects our national security, as well as the integrity of our political system.
When President Trump, brazenly and shamefully, flouts the constitutional protections implemented by the Founders to avoid improper influence, he violates one of the core principles of our Constitution. He has never come to Congress asking for any permission for any of these deals; that is for sure. His willingness to use the privileges of his office to enrich himself and his family seems to know no bounds. Congress simply cannot stand aside because Congress is the one who has to enforce the emoluments clause.
I know. I went to court during the first Trump term. I organized many of my colleagues in both the House and the Senate to ask the courts to enforce the emoluments clause, and we won in district court. Our case failed in the court of appeals because of lack of standing; that is to say, we lacked authorization, specific permission from the House or the Senate to go forward.
There were 214 other Members of Congress who joined in my lawsuit to enforce this clause. There is no other party that is an enforcer for this clause, and if the President refuses to seek our approval for acceptance of these foreign benefits, we have no choice but to go to court again.
I am hopeful that my Republican colleagues will join me in saying: Well, we may be wrong about all of this corruption, about what Blumenthal is saying about the violation of the foreign emoluments clause, but let's let a court decide. Let's bring it to a judge on the Federal court--because in my view this violation of law is so abjectly and obviously clear that it demands an answer from the courts.
Accordingly, in a moment, I will ask for unanimous consent to pass a resolution that would direct Senate legal counsel to file a lawsuit on behalf of the U.S. Senate to enforce the emoluments clause.
And I will just close by saying to my Republican colleagues: I challenge you. I challenge you to prove that you are more than just lackeys to President Trump, that you are just more than automatic approvers of whatever he does, his self-enrichment schemes, and show that the Senate still has spine, still has self-respect, and still has respect for the Founders, who said that no one is above the law.
No one can brazenly and shamefully commit corruption that endangers the national security of the United States of America and makes our Nation vulnerable to this kind of interference from foreign powers, whether they are in the Middle East or Russia or anywhere around the globe.
Res. 219, submitted earlier today, and that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, if President Trump is everything that my colleague has just said, he never would have suggested this $400 million boondoggle. He never would have thought that the American people should pay billions of dollars to retrofit the plane. He never would have risked the American security in the threat that is posed by foreign powers bugging or hacking the security devices or disabling the mechanisms of this plane.
And if this President never flies on this plane, it will only be because of the vocal and vehement protests that we are seeing, not only on the floor of the U.S. Senate but across the country, from MAGA personalities and commentators to everyday Americans who are aghast that hundreds of millions--in fact, billions--of dollars will be spent on this boondoggle that puts at risk American security. If President Trump never takes possession of this plane, it will only be because he has been embarrassed and shamed by our vehement and vocal protests against doing it. And the reaction of everyday Americans has been one of vehement objection.
But this plane is only the most visible and tangible evidence of a corrupt administration--and, particularly, the crypto corruption, where hundreds of millions of dollars are literally flowing into the bank accounts and pockets of President Trump and his family. And everyday Americans are suffering losses because of it.
The investors in his meme coin--tens of thousands of them--are losers. They have lost money. And many other Americans are likely to suffer losses as well. So the tangible impact of that crypto corruption is real and present and ongoing.
And so I think enforcement of the emoluments clause through a lawsuit brought by the Senate of the United States, authorized through this resolution, is absolutely necessary and appropriate now.
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